Month: December 2017

Relax and reflect over the holiday season – and see here for lots of ways to get involved with us for 2018 – from soil to AgTech, conservation tillage to farm hack – there are lots of topis to sink your teeth into with ARC for 2018. […]

Here Frank Armstrong ponders how different the rural west of Ireland was – and can be again – through the medium of food production. Family excursions, a mid century self-help co-op movement, which used horticulture as a vehicle for change, and the future of food production all feature. […]

‘Grass-fed’ is now widely used across the global market place for bovine products. It is loosely defined and can mean anything from 51% of the animal’s diet coming from grazed grass and forages to 100% fed on grass. ‘Grass-fed’ is now so common place that one must ask whether it retains any great value as product differentiation. Has ‘grass-fed’ seen its day? And how should sustainable food move forward? […]

Continuing in our series of CAP commentary from as wide a range of sources as possible, below we present the CAP position statement of MEP Martin Häusling. In it, he points to the folly of following an export and growth model for agri-food. Moreover, this model as it stands delivers little by way of environmental goods, or for animal welfare or the rural economy. He also emphasises the specific benefits of organic farming, while giving us ten points for major CAP reform. […]

CAP’s way to address diverse rural spaces under a broad policy umbrella has many shortcomings, including the discrimination against wood pastures as eligible land for direct payments. This impacts pastoralists and the landscape negatively. So will this be addressed by the new reform of the CAP? Or has something else emerged which might actually act as a tool for change? by Flora Sonkin. […]

Somewhere between convenience, efficiency, cost saving and a comprehensive EU surveillance mega state, the use of drones and other in-the-sky technologies for ensuring CAP compliance represents, as it were, a Brave New World. Helene Schultz unpacks the details. […]

This long read by Frank Armstrong gives a background into what he calls the livestock industrial complex. Part history, part contemporary agri-food overview, part health and environmental case and part personal note, this article is speaks of power and how it operates in different spheres. These include politics, media and nutritional advice, all through the prism of livestock farming in Ireland. […]

Letter From A Farm

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